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15. Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Mamoru Oshii's adaptation of Masamune Shirow serialized manga is a sci-fi classic in the tradition of Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner. Ghost in the Shell asks all the questions of the hardest sci-fi—what does it mean to be human? how do we know ourselves?—within a rain and gun heavy world that any cyberpunk could call home.

Major Motoko Kusanagi is on the hunt for a hacker known as The Puppet Master, and her pursuit of the criminal sets the stage for all those heady questions that inspired the Wachowski siblings to make The Matrix. (Really, they took Ghost in the Shell to producer Joel Silver and told him they wanted to do this, but for real.)—RS